Home » World Events » Samoa
Category Archives: Samoa
Some thoughts about mooted changes to Media ownership law in Australia
People are creatures of habit and it is only that so many people are habituated to buying the news papers that any are still being sold at all. Just take any kind of commute on public transport and consider how many people are reading a paper and how many are staring at a screen instead. Some certainly may be playing games or even watching video but I expect that they will be out numbering those who are still reading dead tree editions of the MSM.
Then there is the things in the paper that people buy them for, most papers are not exclusively about politics and current affairs anyway, so some readers will be buying the paper for its coverage of sport, lifestyle or even just for the crossword puzzles. My point is that the political classes (in particular those from the left ) just look at the raw sales figured and they think that every reader of the Herald Sun is in the thrall of Rupert Murdoch and that the owners dictate to their readers directing their opinions. The reality is that all media entities write to their audience. If they don’t their audience wither away quite quickly. With the coming of the internet this is even more how things work Online entities are even more in an endless quest for readers so you have to play to what your readers want rather than thinking that you can manipulate their thinking. I have been writing a blog for nearly a decade now and I have noticed just how quickly particular readers flit in and out its the same now with the way that people read things online from the likes of Murdoch, Fairfax or even the Guardian People don’t just get their news from one source any more no matter what the subject is they will read what several sources say about it and then make up their mind. This behaviour is the same when it comes to broadcast TV people flit form one channel to another seeking different perspectives. My argument is simple, if the media consumers have changed their habits then perhaps there is something in the notion that media diversity laws from the last century should perhaps reflect those changes as well.
Cheers Comrades
Half a million page views at the Sandpit
I know that statistical miles stones are really meaningless but that does not stop you feeling pretty good when you reach them. Well if you keep an eye on the hit counter at the bottom of the page some time today I expect that you will see the counter tick over t0 the magical “500,000” mark . That is pretty good for a modest blog written as a bit of fun .
Thanks very much to all of those who take the time to read what I and my friends put up here and a special thanks to all of those who take the time to comment and argue with what is on this web-page. Commentary and argument is the life blood of blogging and long may it keep pumping at the Sandpit.
Cheers Comrades
Its all about activating the guilt chip in the heads of the latte sippers
Warministas love to counter the citation of extreme winter conditions (as proof that the world is not warming) with the suggestion that it is only “weather” and that “weather is not Climate“. Personally i have always thought that such a distinction is rather spurious. Spurious in the same way that saying that the millimetre marks on a tape measure are not a measurement in the same way that the metre marks are. It is all a matter of scale. Despite the Warministas denouncing any citation of any weather event that contradicts their argument they are still rather fond of citing weather events that fit with their own prognostications
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny – and ignored warnings from scientific advisers. The report’s author later withdrew the claim because the evidence was too weak.
The link was central to demands at last month’s Copenhagen climate summit by African nations for compensation of $US100 billion from the rich nations.
However, the IPCC knew in 2008 that the link could not be proved but did not alert world leaders, who have used weather extremes to bolster the case for action on climate change.
Kevin Rudd last November linked weather extremes to the debate over the government’s emissions trading scheme.
“We will feel the effects of climate change fastest and hardest, and therefore we must act this week, and the government will be doing everything possible to make sure that can occur,” the Prime Minister said at the time.
British Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband has suggested floods – such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 – could be linked to global warming.
US President Barack Obama said last year: “More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.”
Last month British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament that the financial agreement at Copenhagen “must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm”.
The IPCC has now been forced to reassess its report linking extreme weather to climate change.
There is a clear dissonance here between the “weather is not climate” mantra and the “weather events prove Global Warming is happening” rhetoric that we are getting from The likes Of Obama and Brother Number One and it is obvious to me that the rhetoric is intended to activate the guilt chips in the heads of the worlds progressives this enables the aforementioned leaders to bring about fundamental changes to our society by stealth. Changes to the energy economy and changes to the world’s political institutions. But then hasn’t that been the desire of religion since men began to draw pictures on the stone walls of their caves? Like the measuring tape I mentioned earlier it is all a matter of scale and finding the marks on the tape that fit the liturgy.
Oh yeah its also another reason to think that the UN in general and the IPCC in particular is as useless as titties on a bull.
Cheers Comrades
😉
Front line report on the situation in Samoa
Len posted this as a comment in my previous post but I thought that it deserved a post of its own and I reproduce it here:
Hello boys and girls.
Am back, and glad to be so. Gave the “hugs and kisses”, big hugs and kisses, as well as the kids, and looked outside, thanking god we live here, and not there.The main strip at Apia, had only superficial damage, so it was opened very quickly. Elsewhere is a different story. The southern and eastern regions of the place are an absolute disaster. Ironically enough, the capital, Apia, on the north coast of Upolu is relatively unscathed. They got the earthquake, but not the full brunt of the tsunami thank goodness. We managed to get in there, and get fuel thankfully, and it was wonderful to watch, as aircraft from all over the place, were coming in with aid, supplies, fuel and personnel, with eventually, quite literally with no place to put them. Gave us at least, a warm feeling, that perhaps this isn’t such a bad planet to live on after all ?
The majority of the damage, is on the southern, and eastern coasts of the island. The villages, that dot that portion of the island, are quite literally gone, and I mean GONE. So any figure you hear about deaths, is purely conjecture at this stage. Hell, they may never know the exact figure. They are apparently just rounding up survivors, and getting figures that way, trying relentlessly to cross names of a bloody ginormous list. The last census that anyone knows about, was about 2001, and the population figure was about 130k, so now, who knows. It may take weeks or even months before a figure is ascertained.
I honestly believe, that a correct figure will ever be known.
From what I saw, there were quite literally bodies tangled thirty some feet in palm trees. These were people, madly running to the hills to escape the waves, and didn’t make it. Never seen anything like it.Anyway, the planes are back, cleaned, and refueled ready to go again. Probably won’t have to go, as we didn’t do all that much.
Many questions are about to be asked, now is not the time, but come the following weeks, they will be. The you beaut early warning system, was a god dammed disaster. So that will be the first one to be asked, I suppose.
Cheers all, going to give everyone another hug and a kiss, and praise the bloke upstairs for my good luck.
Perhaps not a bad idea for us all, not to do the same ?
A most sincere Hat tip To Len and the boys for this one and I want to repeat that if you can help then please do so.
Respect Comrades
Iain
Postscript
Although I am not the author of the report above I would remind all readers that the content is still copyright and that It may not be reproduced without permission of its author and proper attribution. As per my copyright disclaimer on the front page of my blog
Geography and Empire
Leftist orthodoxy claims that colonialism and the age of European empires was a universally bad thing. This is an argument that has never rung true to me. I have always thought that, overall the British empire was actaully good for many of the parts of the world that were once coloured pink on the global map.
Michael Palin washing a bull elephant in Kaziranga Wildlife Park, Assam, India. The former Monty Python star said we should remember the good that arose from Britain's days at the helm of a global empire
Britain should stop apologising for its colonial past, Michael Palin has declared.
The travel show presenter and former Monty Python star said we should instead remember the good that arose from Britain’s days at the helm of a global empire.
Palin’s feelings are in contrast to the tendency of modern politicians to bend over backwards to apologise for Britain’s imperial past.
[…]
The TV star said: ‘If we say that all of our past involvement with the world was bad and wicked and wrong, I think we’re doing ourselves a great disservice.
‘It has set up lines of communication between people that are still very strong.
‘We still have links with other countries – culturally, politically and socially – that, perhaps, we shouldn’t forget.’
Mr Palin, who carved out a new career for himself after Python when he began travelling the world in series of BBC travel shows, also said that he wanted geography to be treated more seriously as an academic subject.
As Palin says there were a lot of good things that remain as a result of the Empire not the least of which is a way of structuring law and government that seems to work pretty well in many parts of the world. The way that English is for all intents and purposes the global language is another .
There you go something to consider over your Kippers this morning.
Tally ho, Pip Pip Comrades
😉